Tuesday, January 17, 2012

What's Your Nightmare?

I don't write horror and I usually only read it when my friends write it. But in my epic fantasy series, The Futhark Chronicles, there are some horrific creatures the people of Futhark must battle. In The Keepers of Sulbreth, the magically gifted Keepers are women dedicating their lives to protecting ordinary people from demons. The Marshals are the swordsmen who help the Keepers in their duties.

I enjoy creating the monsters plaguing Futhark. I often doodle and design them during boring inservices and faculty meetings at work. Not that I'm an artist, but putting a picture with my ideas inspires more ideas.

Childhood fears and those instinctual fears humans are born with also inspire my demonic creations. One of the horrible demons introduced in Keepers is a giant snake. Another is a poisonous rat-like creature that hunts in packs. Who isn't creeped out by rats and snakes? I also gave one of my demons wings with jaws and claws, kind of like a velociraptor that can fly and of course travels in flocks. Then there in one of my favorite, a huge, heavy beast with the personality, body armor and horns of a rhinoceros. Then I get to name them.

Some new demon beasts are discovered in the second book in my series, Beyond the Gate, and the Keepers and Marshals have their hands full saving the people from these powerful, fantastical fell beasts.

What kind of creature might your nightmares create? What animal in real life gives you shivers up the spine? Spiders? Snakes? Rats?

Most of my otherworldly creatures are from the Underworld, and I try to stay true to their descriptions from Greek mythology, but I love adding extra embellishments, along with quirky personality traits.

Icky hairy spiders for me too.The hairless, more venomous ones do not scare me, but when I see those long hairy legs moving it freaks me out. I do sometimes have nightmares about the evil little creatures.

Also zombies, just the fact they're all sick and infested and icky - much rather be chased by a fast vicious werewolf than a slow moving brain sucker.

Spiders are the worse. They have hairy bodies, bony legs, hundreds of eyes that circle their heads and pinchers as mouths that bite the moment they make contact with human flesh. Not to mention their huge cephalothorax, which oozes a stringy substance that sticks to everything.

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The Susquehanna Writers are authors living in the beautiful Susquehanna Valley in central Pennsylvania. Our genres include suspense, military thrillers, young adult, urban fantasy, speculative, mainstream and romance. Bookmark this blog and visit often!